This Magnificent Cake!  

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“We must be careful, skillful and ready to act…[to] get us a slice of this magnificent African cake” --Leopold II of Belgium cited in Divide and Rule: The Partition of Africa, 1880-1914 (1991) by Hans Wesselling, page 71

"Borrowing its title from King Leopold II's expressed wish for a piece of 'this magnificent cake' of fertile African territories (call me Congo), the mildly hypnotic but still soberly made stop-motion film unfolds 5 different character and stories. Unlike other anthology films, where a frame narrative is sought, here the film it places them in the manner of Max Ophüls La Ronde (1950): reappearing characters with flawed sensitivities light up the scenery of both palaces and reassuring nature as a last resort of humanity."[1]

"“I don’t really remember how or when we came up with the idea,” says Roels, “but I do remember both of us really getting into Journey to the End of the Night by Céline and being inspired by that."[2]

"Troela, troela, troelala "

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Ce magnifique gâteau ! (2018, English title: This Magnificent Cake!) is a European animation film written and directed by Marc James Roels and Emma de Swaef. It is cloth/fabric stop-motion film. The title is based on a dictum by Leopold II of Belgium recorded in a letter in which he remarked eagerly that he wanted his share of "this magnificent African cake".

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Synopsis

It is an anthology film set in colonial Africa in the late 19th century telling the stories of five different characters: a troubled king (who has a bad dream featuring the Royal Greenhouses of Laeken and wets himself), a middle-aged Pygmy working in a luxury hotel as an ashtray, a failed businessman on an expedition who stole the fortune of his family which subsequently went bankrupt, a lost porter and a young army deserter, and a clarinetist who is forbidden by the king to play his cuckoo notes in "The Cuckoo in the Depths of the Woods".

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Soundtrack

Maurice Ravel, Claude Debussy, Camille Saint-Saëns, Gustav Holst, Charles Ives

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Blurb

"Comprised of the interrelated stories of five unforgettable characters, this stop-motion animated marvel uses the history of the Belgian Congo in the 19th century as a wool-covered springboard (literally) for a bold, surreal, and sometimes horrific study of European colonialism's hidden pathologies, blind ambitions, and capacity for cruelty."
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Fiche technique

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Distribution

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Distinctions

Il remporte le Prix André-Martin pour un court métrage français à l'édition 2018 du festival international du film d'animation d'Annecy.


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